Uber Testing Airport Pre-Match and Re-Match

Harry here. Have you noticed airport queues getting longer? If so, it may be because pre-match and re-match have come to your city. Today, RSG contributor Curtis Preston explains what this program is, how it works, and how it will affect drivers if and when it arrives in your city.

In some cities, airport First In First Out (FIFO) queues are taking much longer than they used to. If you’ve been wondering why, it’s because Uber and Lyft are both testing some new programs that have to do with airport pickups. Uber calls it pre-match and re-match and, depending on how you look at things, these features make airport pickups better or worse. However, whether you like the features or not, you are definitely going to want to alter your airport strategy once they come to your city.

As we know, Uber recently launched ‘180 days of change’, and while the first chapter focused on earnings, Uber says there are many more improvements to come. This could be one of them, since we noticed that Uber was testing a cancellation timer, which it eventually rolled out to all drivers. If you see any new features being tested, please let us know so we can look into it!

If you need a refresher on how airport queues work, please read this airport guide for drivers.

Pre-Match

This first feature appears to only be on Uber, and it has no relation to the Lyft feature by the same name. Pre-Match is what Lyft calls stacked rides, where you have another ride assigned to you while you’re already on a ride. This features is based on the idea that the FIFO zone for many airports is quite large, and it may take you 10 minutes or more to get from the farthest parts of the FIFO zone to a passenger. Pre-match basically tells you that you are about to get a pick up at the airport based on your position in the queue, and you should start making your way towards the pickup area.

You might ask yourself why you can’t do this already without this feature. The reason is that your display only shows that there are 0-10 cars ahead of you in the queue. You don’t know if you are car number 11 or car number two. This feature is basically telling you that you are car number two or three and you should start getting closer to the pickup area.

This feature seems pretty helpful and harmless, but there is one thing you should watch out for. Depending on how airport pickups work in your city, pre-match could create a problem. Consider pickups at San Diego airport terminal one, which happen inside a parking lot that charges you a fee if you are in there for more than 10 minutes. If you were told by pre-match that you are about to get a ride and pulled into the parking lot to wait for it, you could very easily go over 10 minutes waiting to receive the ride request and eventually see the passenger.

Some passengers wait until they are at the pickup area to request a pick up, while others try to time it so that the car is arriving as they are arriving at the pickup area. They know it takes 5 to 10 minutes for a car to show up, so they request a car 5 to 10 minutes ahead of when they believe they will be at the curb. I don’t know how far ahead the pre-match feature would send you to the lot, but if it’s anything more than a minute or so, you could easily go over 10 minutes and end up paying a parking fee. Therefore, I think you should use this feature to get close to the pickup area, but do not pull into the actual pickup area until you verify the customer is there or almost there.

Re-Match

The re-match feature is completely different, and only applies to those who are dropping off a passenger at the airport. You actually skip the FIFO queue and are given the next passenger request if it happens within a short period of time after your drop-off. The Uber FAQ says this should happen within a few minutes.

This potentially makes runs to the airport much more lucrative than they otherwise would be. In many cities, airports are very far from the city center where rideshare drivers like to hover. Without the re-match feature, a ride to the airport might be a very nice fare, but then you have two unpleasant choices: wait in a long FIFO queue or deadhead it back to where you want to be. Now with the re-match feature, a ride to the airport could also mean a ride back to the city center, depending on whether or not there are incoming flights at the exact moment that you are arriving at the airport.

Re-match will (hopefully) make sure you’re not this guy

This does mean the FIFO queue will now take much longer in cities that have re-match, making the FIFO queue much less attractive. This is really important in cities where the airport is a long way from the city center, as many drivers deadhead out to the airport and sit in the FIFO queue for a nice long run back to the city. The logic of doing makes even less sense than it did before, unless you really don’t care how long you sit in the FIFO queue.

Why Are Uber and Lyft Doing This?

There are multiple theories as to why these features are coming out. Some have suggested that this is about rewarding drivers who take those long trips out to the airport. Some drivers don’t want to take that long drive to the airport because they know they’re going to deadhead back or sit in a long queue. Another theory is that Uber and Lyft don’t want drivers sitting in the queue. They want them out driving and picking up passengers. While I believe that’s true, I don’t think either of these are why this is happening.

I think both pre-match and re-match are designed to lower passenger wait times and take away the one advantage that taxis had at the airport. With taxis at most airports, they are allowed to have a small queue of taxis at the curb that is fed by a much larger queue of taxis waiting somewhere else. That means that you can walk right out and step right into a taxi. But with a rideshare car, you’re going to wait 5 to 10 minutes. With pre-match and re-match, they should be able to lower that time to next to nothing.

How to Tell if Your City Has Re-Match

To see where Uber is doing this, I tried a Google search of “site:uber.com Re-Match” along with a bunch of airport codes, and I was able to determine that the re-match feature is running at SFO, OAK, SJC, MCO, DEN, and TPA. To see if it’s also at your airport, try that search with your city name or airport name. For example, to see if it’s at Daytona Beach airport, enter “site:uber.com Re-Match DAB” or “site:uber.com Re-match Daytona Beach.” If you have Pre-Match and Re-Match, there will be a FAQ page for your city. (Daytona doesn’t have it yet.)

Lyft, on the other hand, has nothing about this feature on their website, but drivers are reporting it is happening in Denver. Please let us know if you have any additional information on this.

A Few Words of Caution

If you have an active destination filter while you are sitting at the curb, you will not get a re-match. This doesn’t mean you can’t use a destination filter to get to the airport, though. You just need to deactivate it as soon as you get there. There are multiple reports from multiple drivers that they get a re-match in this scenario.

Another concern is about the time period after you drop off a passenger but before you get a re-match. If the drop off and pick up areas are the same, it gives drivers the incentive to sit there for a few minutes waiting for a ride. There is talk in some of the forums of drivers being approached by law enforcement or airport management. If you are sitting there with a ride request on your phone and you can show that you are waiting for a passenger in the pickup area – no problem. But if a law enforcement officer looks at your phone and he or she sees that you do not have an active ride request, you can easily end up with an expensive ticket.

So if you do not get a re-match immediately after dropping off your passenger, you need to be careful. Multiple sources suggest that the re-match period is only two minutes, so definitely do not wait at the curb longer than that. One approach would be to keep an eye out for law enforcement or airport management and drive away if any of them appear to be approaching your vehicle. If you actually end up speaking to one of them, tell them you’re fiddling with your phone. Tell them that you are setting your GPS destination before driving off. Tell them anything other than “I’m waiting for a passenger,” unless your phone shows that you are waiting for a passenger.

Depending on your airport and how aggressive law enforcement is, you might consider looping around, especially if pickup and drop-off are in two different places. A loop in some airports may take a really long time, so that might not be an option for you. In my airport, however, it only takes a few minutes. And since drop-off and pickup are in two separate locations, it makes perfect sense to do a loop to start heading towards the pickup area.

Analysis

I personally like these features. They help most drivers and they help passengers. The only drivers that are getting hurt in the process are those that hang out in the FIFO queue. I’ve never liked sitting in that queue for a lot of reasons, so I’m OK with that. But if you’re a queue-sitter, you’re going to hate this when it comes to your city.

Readers, has pre-match and re-match come to your city? If so, what do you think of it? Is this a feature you’re looking forward to?

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W. Curtis Preston is a part-time rideshare driver with over 1,500 rides under his belt. He drives in the San Diego market. Like a lot of people, Preston has a day job and it's as an IT analyst specializing in backup and recovery.

Something like the Re-Match has been in Vegas for a while, but most drivers who know about it only realize it exists on accident. If you’ve dropped off a passenger at the airport and go back to the queue it’ll shove you to the front and give you a ride as soon as you enter the waiting area, or if there’s a ton of people waiting at least queue you towards the front. I always figured it was kind of an incentive to stay on the move.

W. Curtis Preston

Yes, it’s an incentive to NOT sit in the airport queue. Interesting that the rematch FAQ is NOT in the vegas help page.

stylecreator

LAX is always a nightmare. Usually 50 or more riders are standing at Rideshare signs and only a few drivers are able to get there to pick them up, the wait time is ridiculous. The logistics are terribly off. The departure area is loaded with cars , uber, lyft, and regular drivers dropping off and picking up in the spots.When guys get in the LAX airport most simply circle just to see about another rematch causing a worst jam. Who wants airport rides without a surge sometimes we only get about .70 cents a mile regularly. Yesterday at LAX it took 20 mins to get in pick up a pax and 12 mins to get out. There is nothing cost efficient about these airport systems thats why guys wait for a surge. Uber can never eliminate Taxis at the airport especially with pickups and dropoffs in the same areas, traffic upstairs is now 3x-4x times 2 years ago. Also most taxis dont care about short ride requests. Each ride they take they know the destination before accepting. So they never have stupid 1 or 2 mile trips wasting time and money. We should definitely know the destination of any pax before accepting a ride.Also what about uberpool at LAX hows that going to work. Key overlooked point is every 6 months Uber loses 50% of their drivers so a new group of inexperienced drivers mix in and have to learn how to
handle this complicated system of maximizing your rideshare profits with no training.LOL

W. Curtis Preston

LAX is the worst. It was NOT designed to make getting in and out quick.

boxdin

I was departing airport after dropoff, checked que, decided to go on to another part of town. About 3 miles down the road I get a run at the airport lane. I know the qui line was long, but I still got the call.
I have not trusted the que for a while now after sitting for hours supposedly first in line.

W. Curtis Preston

What airport do you drive for?

boxdin

ABQ and there were initially 7 in the que and the number was 5 in the que when I left the airport. I was at least two miles away when the call came to pu at the yellow curb.

W. Curtis Preston

Not sure you can say you have rematch based on that. If you told me you have 50 in queue, that would be something. But 7 in the queue can be fed really quickly and then Uber’s scrambling to find anyone. You just happened to be nearby.

Amy Gurley

I actually feel slighted at this new feature. It’s not in Seattle and it probably never will be. I’m not even allowed at the FIFO because I don’t have a hybrid vehicle, so I seriously hate airport requests. I’m about 30-40 minutes away from the airport and traffic up and down I-5 is almost always a nightmare. If I got a re-match at the airport I would be in heaven. Unless they take me up to Seattle, then I would be even more pissed because I don’t have a business lic in Seattle. So technically I’d rather deadhead it back home or just put on my destination filter.

W. Curtis Preston

If local regs don’t allow you to do airport pickups based on your vehicle type, I don’t think you’re going to get a rematch. FWIW, it’s not the feature that’s slighting you; it’s the local regs.

czervik

F’ing tree-hugging liberals. That’s what you get for living on the Left Coast I guess.

W. Curtis Preston

That made me LOL for real.

Immortuus

I’m pretty sure that you can turn off the destination filter before the ride ends.

At SNA, the que usually moves pretty quickly. I won’t hang around unless there are 35 or fewer in the que. Since most of us who are waiting hang around the same Starbucks, I doubt pre-match would do anything to lessen waiting times there. We have a relatively small geo-fence around the airport area so drivers are always pretty close. Rematch? I’m not big on that, either. Why should the driver just getting there be able to jump the line?

W. Curtis Preston

Of course you’re not big on rematch; it will make for longer queue times! As to your question as to why they should be able to jump the line. Remember, it’s not about you. Neither of these features is about helping the driver IMO.

They’re about simulating the “waiting taxi” and shortening pickup times. If a pax can get right into an Uber that just pulled up, or can have an Uber 1-2 mins away, then maybe they will use Uber instead of getting into a taxi. Same with prematch. If Uber is 5-10 mins out and a taxi is right there, they might jump into a taxi. If an uber is 1 min out, then they’ll grab an Uber.

Let’s use your airport as an example. (I love that airport, BTW.) You mean the Starbucks at 4678 Campus Drive, right? Google Maps says it’s a six minute trip from there to the center of SNA pickup area. Prematch could start sending you there when stats say you’re 4 mins from getting a request. That way when they ping you, you’re 2 mins out. 2 mins might not sound like a lot quicker than 6 mins, but it can be to a pax. Again… it’s not about you. 😉

A story from a pax last week illustrates why Uber is doing this. I had a very Uber-friendly pax that I was taking to the airport. They said when they landed at SAN, the app told them that drivers were like 7-10 mins away. They said that like it was an hour. They interpreted it to mean that no one was sitting in the queue, but I highly doubt that was the case. So they jumped in a taxi instead of calling uber. These two features are about increasing the chances of having an Uber there in 2-3 minutes, not 5-10.

And IF these features are successful, they will increase the number of peeps that take airport rides from the airport, which will increase demand, etc, etc.

The question was more rhetorical than inquiry. The Starbucks most drivers wait at is north of the airport off MacArthur. Although Uber will quote the rider 6 minutes, it’s usually less than that unless there is a rush. I know the engineers at Uber won’t look at it, but the layout of the airport regarding vehicle approach and the fact that pickup and drop off require you to completely circle the airport, means no time will be saved for the pax by implementing these approaches.

The airport layout, by the way, is what I love as well. I also like LGB because of its simplicity. There, a driver can sit in the cellphone waiting lot while in the cue. And, their recently implemented rules on pickup and drop off actually making it easier on pax and drivers.

W. Curtis Preston

LBG is da’ bomb. I cried when AA stopped flying out of there.

Phil Underhill

I’m glad you said that. I was thinking the same thing. Of course, if it was me, I’d accept that I can jump the line but not if I’m in the line when others do it too lol

But San Diego airport isn’t too terrible. It was a lot worse last year when you got added to the airport queue while driving down rosecrans.

The booboo now is the terminal 1 pickup because even when you have a fare and you’re on your way to pick them up, there’s sometimes a huge line to where the passengers are waiting. This can eat up your 10 minutes fast! I think the remedy here should’ve been to just keep pickups and drop offs in the same place like terminal 2.

W. Curtis Preston

You’re still added to the queue if you’re anywhere near the airport. Maybe not Rosecrans, but definitely close to it. And I know you can drive down Rosecrans and still stay in the queue.

For Term 1 pickups, I text the pax and don’t pull in the lot until they say they’re there or at least close. I then bypass the line of Ubers by taking the ticket dispensers on the left, then immediately turning left, then right, then right again where the line starts. Then I just turn left into an empty spot even if it’s way at the end. Time is money, baby. Going straight down forces you to wait in line and makes you susceptible to drivers who don’t want to pull into the farther spaces. I’ve never been in the lot more than 2-3 mins.

Yea, I know it’s a dick move but it works. 😉

Phil Underhill

lol
You’re a genius!

W. Curtis Preston

Tell my wife. LOL

Phil Underhill

I generally avoid SAN pickups if I can. Hotels and stuff are just too close to the airport and it makes no sense to wait an hour just to drop off someone a couple blocks away.

W. Curtis Preston

That has been my opinion as well. I only go in the queue if it’s <20 people and/or I feel like I need a break. OR it's dinner time. I'll swing by, get in the queue, then go to Liberty Station to eat something yummy while I sit in the queue.

Yup, SNA is the same. And, I follow the same approach. I’ve found <35 to be the magic number.

Phil Underhill

My magic range is 20-30. I use the lot for breaks too and to use the portapotty even if I leave right after I’m done.

W. Curtis Preston

The actual bathroom down at Spanish Landing is MUUUUUCH nicer. It’s still a “beach” style bathroom (metal toilet no toilet seat) but at least it’s running water, flushes, and there’s a sink to wash your hands.

Portapotties are where humanity goes to die.

Johnny Chan

A Re-Match function that aims to match the driver to an airport pax back towards the driver’s home base, in my case 30+mi away in NE LA from LAX, instead of say… 30+mi south to OC, would be very very humane of Lyft and Uber. Tho I guess the new inclusive Destination Trips towards Uber bonuses is going to fix that issue anyways.

I’ve tried both LAX and SFO, and LAX seem to be more TNC driver-friendly than SFO whose TNC waiting area is under stricter monitoring and seem to move REAL SLOW compared to LAX… tho I’ve only spent a few hours at SFO… I’ve “lost my queue” at both LAX and SFO before when I got pings from pax and airport employees in the immediate vicinity of the airport, and travelling very short distances towards or away from the terminals… if there’s a bonus quota to be met, it may be more worthwhile, especially early into your “shift” to drive slow and locally just to increase frequency of local non-airport rides … then switch-on Mystro after bonus quota is met to reel`em all in… or I should say; to avoid allowing wonderful Lyft and Uber riders standing around too long especially in late dead hours thanks to Mystro.

Other than that, I generally avoid airports unless I get pinged out to them, and even then, I’d usually avoid the queues favoring instead higher-frequency driving locally north towards Culver City, east towards Hawthorne/South LA, or perhaps south towards Manhattan/Redondo Beach and Torrance… South LA may have a lot more rough neighborhoods, but to people there are quite attuned to Lyft and Uber… AND often is the case, gets me pinged back towards homebase near DT anyways… Santa Monica too… the luck of TNC drivers living near DTLA.

W. Curtis Preston

Unfortunately you can’t use a DF in the airport queue or if you want a re-match. 🙁

Wayne G.

question for any LAX drivers out there: What is the deal with drop offs at Arrivals when Departures level is completely congested? Airport encourages sending citizens to Arrivals to even out the flow but as I understand, rideshare drivers are subject to big fine, etc. by dropping off or picking up at Arrivals. Comments anyone?

Larry Diaz

I think this is a great idea and i hope it becomes active at LAX. Maybe it might also resolve the problem Of those who feel compelled to turn off their phones will waiting for surge.

W. Curtis Preston

You mean people in the queue turning off their phone waiting for surge? They’d have to all do it together for that to work.

Larry Diaz

I think you misread my point. Did it state anywhere that I implied that they would all turn off their phones to create a surge? No it did not..

czervik

Mostly drivers will ever encounter these schemes. Most drivers don’t live on the coasts. In Cleveland our airport queue is 5 minutes from the airport. The airport is 10 minutes from downtown. I think a lot of cities in “flyover country” will never experience any of this. It makes zero sense here. The airport is where the long rides are and nobody deadheads away from the airport, they stay.

W. Curtis Preston

Our is 5 mins away, too. But Uber customers are getting more impatient, as I mentioned before. Maybe the difference there is Midwesterners are a bit more chill and don’t think of 5 mins as a lifetime.

czervik

Actually, we’re usually waiting for the riders. They may order their Uber while still getting checked baggage and sometimes while on the tarmac yet to deplane.

W. Curtis Preston

I think this is a chicken/egg situation. We wait for the riders because they order it before they’re ready. They order it before they’re ready because otherwise they have to wait for us.

What you’re talking about is airport uber savvy peeps. What I’m talking about is people that are used to Uber, but not used to hailing it from an airport and don’t know to do that. Those are the people Uber is trying to keep from grabbing a cab, like the ones in my earlier comment that said they did that because the Uber queue was 5-10 mins, like that was an eternity.

chung louie

Lyft has rematch here in SFO. I received a ride in my queue as I approached the airport last Friday night.

Clybourn

The Uber re-match has been happening in Chicago for the last 3 months or so, but no one ever told anyone about it, so most us us thought it was a glitch.

W. Curtis Preston

Again… no mention on uber.com. #uberfail

jungledog

Yep, I was thinking Uber’s Re-Match was a glitch! Uber’s Pre Match has been up and running in Chicago for a couple or three weeks. I don’t know how long Re-Match has been in use here in Chicago with Lyft since I just upgraded to a car qualifies for Power Driver (had a 2010 car, driving a 2013 now) and never did much Lyft before that but I had two or three Lyft Re-Matches at Midway last week.

FP

Ya, I’ve been seeing that re-match feature in Chicago since I first started driving, which was about 4 months ago. I’ve been logging my times of the day at airports, plan on sharing the stats eventually.

I rarely put myself in the FIFO que, unless it’s in the mid-portion of the day, as the wait times are shorter, and the mid-part of the day is not nearly as active.

Pretty much if I don’t get a rematch, I leave the airport right away most times.

Clybourn

That’s the smart thing to do.

Rob_S

>> I think both pre-match and re-match are designed to lower passenger wait times and take away the one advantage that taxis had at the airport.
If that was the case, you would think that, rather than the way they are doing it, the app would be designed to match riders with drivers whose time to pick up is the shortest. For example, at PIT, the cell phone lot is located with all other parking but simply allows free parking for up to one hour. But if you are paying for parking, you can park in any parking location for as long as permitted there (from talking with an airport security officer my second time there back in 2015). The EV charging station at the airport is one of the few in the Pittsburgh area that is not a free station, but it is at the end of the loop around the airport, right where it merges the highway offramp feeding the terminal and avoid going through the parking entrances and exits. So it would take me about a minute to get to a pick up, whereas if I had to navigate from the parking lots, it would be about three times as long. The first half of last year, I could leave my day job, which is out in the direction of the airport, and might sit at the charging station for a half hour to an hour before getting a pick up. But as more drivers came on board, it started taking an average of two hours, which wasn’t worth the wait (and doesn’t make sense when the limit on the cell phone lot is only an hour).

W. Curtis Preston

Yea… unfortunately, I think that would lead to lots and lots of really bad behavior. Lyft used to do it that way and they went to the FIFO lot partially due to that behavior and the complaints they were getting from airports. In fact, in San Diego, you will only go into the queue if you are in the FIFO lot. I’m in the Uber queue long before getting into the Lyft queue if I decide to pull into the FIFO lot, as you will only go into the Lyft queue once you’re actually in the lot.

Big Al

I have received a ping upon dropping off rider at ATL twice two months ago. I thought it was odd. Before the pax was even out of the car I had another request – was not planning to sit in the que. I would love the re-match feature because I don’t get the logic of sitting in the que for an hour for one ride??? I could do four rides in same time frame. I live 45 miles north of Airport. I know from experience I can always get a long airport run if I log in at 5AM Monday. I would get up at 4AM Monday more often if I knew that I could always pair an Airport Pickup with the long trip to the airport. I could be done with ride share before breakfast after a profitable morning.

W. Curtis Preston

I feel exactly the same. I live 40 miles from the airport and can easily get an airport ride early in the morning. But then I’m pretty much stuck down there.

Big Al

Yep! Once I confirm Re-Match is working in Atlanta, I may make early morning airport runs from the exurbs a regular part of my Ride-Share routine.

Mark T.

I have experienced Lyft’s re-match at PHX Sky Harbor. I too thought it was a glitch, but it occured twice now. I received an advance warning as I was about to drop my riders at the terminal. I love it!

Jason De Monto

We have had rematch since Nov last year. Works very well if your dropping off, not so great so wait in the que unless it’s late at night!

amdrive

There’s one detail about the FIFO Queue that they have in place that stops these systems from allowing you really to move toward a potential passenger at the airport though.
It’s the GPS fence that cuts off on the way to the terminals! And its not very far toward the terminals….. Once you are past that line, you won’t get a ride request. So, that’s why we have to stay back at LAX, for example. This zone I’m sure was created in the deal with the airport to keep Ride Share cars from clogging up the loop. Without some consensus, you’re not gonna be able to get much closer than the parking lot anyway. One of the more ridiculous things at LAX on a side note is the portion of the parking lot they give to Ride Share cars, while the TCP cars have 80% of the lot with room to lay out a cot and take a nap.
In Houston they tried something like the Pre-Match system at least going back to over a year ago, where they tried to get drivers to head out of the Queue lot toward the terminals as well with a text that said you would get a request while on the way toward the terminals. The problem with that one is that no more than about a minute’s drive toward the terminals you have to choose between different split-off directions that are each about a mile in several different directions (so you need to know which terminal) So, it’s impossible to know which direction to go. They might as well stay in the Queue lot, which is what most people I think did. So, all the companies can do when it comes to these things I’d say is incentivize based on money.
I think what might work, with LAX in mind, is just extend the queue to all around the airport inner part of the airport and just prevent drivers from stopping at any zones without pickups, so basically let the drivers circle the terminal. It sounds crazy but the point would be to let drivers get a head start on in toward the terminals if there is a line, as opposed to getting the request 15 minutes from the rider and risking the cancelations. Another thing they can do is create a Ride Share lot a mile or so from the airport with a constant shuttle to the lot from all terminals (shuttle buses circle the aiport). When they get to the lot they immediately get into a Ride Share car.
If they want less drivers at the airport, then raise the earnings on short city rides.

Wayne G.

Cool. Thanks Johnny. Just don’t want to get busted in Arrivals. Not worth it. I am a NYC type driver too. Always better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, right?

Logic

Lyft started Pre-Match in Chicago late fall/early winter 2016 and they were very clever how they set it up. You receive a text notification to head to the airport, once you turn onto the ramp to head to the terminals you receive the request on the app; lyft standard or lyft line passenger name and terminal. (I never do line btw as it takes longer to complete a line, time that could be spent completing shorter minimum fares, also line/pool bothers me because the rates are cheaper and they get to split the cost; not fair. Also, line/pool passengers are more demanding. Finally, there is no benefit to the drivers; if you have two passengers doing a line/pool and one is going from San Francisco to New York, and the second is going from San Francisco to Chicago it’s like that second passenger is riding for free from the viewpoint of your pay. The only people that benefit are the company’s and passenger 1.) If you do not accept the request while on the ramp, it tells you to head back to the staging area, the problem is it takes longer to get to the staging area than the timer, which if i remember correctly was 4 or 5 minutes.

Kayla Modschiedler

I avoid the airport in Columbus like the plague, unless I’m dropping someone off their. Every once in a while I’ll drop someone off and get a pax request right away (on Lyft). so I’ll make the loop and go get them. The parking lot queue usually has 56 plus cars waiting, and I’m sorry to say some of the Uber drivers here are creepy as hell. Some have turned it into their home and sleep in their cars which I find very sad. I actually went there once because I had some studying to do and I knew I could sit there for a couple of hours with no rides and study. It’s a total waste of time to do it on the regular

aamm

What I would love for them to do is allow some sort of destination filter for the airport. I live in a smaller city and the airport is halfway between me and a much bigger city. I mostly drive in the mornings for a few hours before work, so I really can’t pick up rides at the airport if they’re going towards the bigger city – I basically can’t get stuck there. Maybe not a specific pinpoint destination but a “general direction” filter would be great, because it’s too risky for me to wait and end up going somewhere completely in the opposite direction.

W. Curtis Preston

Yea, I don’t understand why they don’t allow us to use destination filters when you’re in a queue.

aamm

Exactly. And then it’s more efficient for everyone.

I just don’t take rides from the airport for that reason.

W. Curtis Preston

I think the worry is that the queue sitters will use it to suck the longer rides out of the queue.

aamm

That makes sense, though if it was a more general destination filter than the current one, it could work. Like an “in the direction of” where you want to go, so it doesn’t filter out the shorter rides that are going that direction. I woudn’t mind dropping people off on the way back home, even if they’re off the highway a bit, as long as I’m not going the opposite way.

Or maybe a way to limit it to return to your home region instead of the other one that’s close but in the opposite direction?

Mabaq

I think it’s because the rideshare airport fare is a joke. Down town Chicago to Ohare cab fare $50+ and a $10 tip. Rideshare the driver makes less than $20 and most times no tip! Guys are waiting in que one to two hours and aren’t making $20! Then they have additional dead time before another ride. It’s unbelievable….. Midway the rideshare fare is less and the que wait time is more!

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I'm Harry, the owner and founder of The Rideshare Guy Blog and Podcast. I used to be a full-time engineer but now I'm a rideshare blogger! I write about my experience driving for Uber, Lyft, and other services and my goal is to help drivers earn more money by working smarter, not harder. Read More…

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